Donald Trump would deport Melania if she divorced him, claims ex-White House aide

Donald Trump would deport Melania if she divorced him, claims ex-White House aide

‘He is a vindictive man, and I would not put anything past him,’ says Omarosa

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump

Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman has claimed Donald Trump would find a way to deport his wife from America if she were to leave him.

In her new tell-all memoir of her time in the White House, Ms Manigault Newman claimed Mr Trump would find a way to invalidate Melania Trump’s citizenship if she were to cause him “the ultimate humiliation”.

She argues the US president would find a way to deport Ms Trump to her native country of Slovenia if she chose to leave him during his presidency.

“Since Donald is fully aware of however she acquired her permanent citizenship, he could, if there were anything fishy around it, expose the methods and somehow invalidate it,” Ms Manigault Newman wrote in Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.

“He is a vindictive man, and I would not put anything past him.”

The first lady reportedly got a green card via a programme specifically for people with “extraordinary ability”, known as the EB-1 programme or the “Einstein visa”. The former fashion model became a US citizen in 2006.

The programme is targeted to people like academic researchers, multinational business executives and those with ongoing national and international acclaim.

“If Melania were to try to pull the ultimate humiliation and leave him while he’s in office, he would find a way to punish her,” Ms Manigault Newman wrote.

“This is a man who has said he could pardon himself from the Mueller investigation. Why not pardon himself over an alleged visa payoff?”

Citizens can be “denaturalised” and deported if they falsify or conceal significant information or will not testify before Congress.

Ms Manigault Newman is promoting her new book, Unhinged (AP)

In the last two months, the Trump administration began looking into removing citizenship from naturalized citizens who may have gained it by cheating or lying.

Ms Trump’s spokesperson, Stephanie Grisham, responded earlier this week to claims in Ms Manigault Newman’s book that Ms Trump could not wait for her husband’s presidency to be over in order to divorce him.

Ms Grisham said the two women “rarely, if ever, interacted” during Ms Manigault Newman’s time at the White House.

“It’s disappointing to her that she is lashing out and retaliating in such a self-serving way, especially after all the opportunities given to her by the president,” Ms Grisham said.

Last week Mr Trump sparked outrage for calling Ms Manigault Newman a “dog” and a “crying lowlife” in a Twitter tirade.

The attack came as Ms Manigault Newman undertook a publicity tour ahead of the release of the book. The book includes a gamut of explosive allegations, including suggestions that there are recordings of the president using the n-word during recordings of The Apprentice. Ms Manigault Newman came to fame as a contestant on the reality TV show in 2003. Mr Trump has denied this, saying on Twitter that “I don’t have that word in my vocabulary, and never have. She made it up.”

Ms Manigault Newman was director of communications for a White House office that networks with various constituency groups until she was fired last December by chief of staff John Kelly, citing “significant integrity issues”. Before joining the administration, Ms Manigault Newman handled African American outreach for Mr Trump’s presidential campaign.

“When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out,” Mr Trump tweeted. “Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!”

As part of her book tour, Ms Manigault Newman has released several audio recordings, including of the meeting in which she was fired by Mr Kelly.

In another recording, Mr Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump – a senior adviser on the president’s re-election campaign – is heard apparently offering Ms Manigault Newman $15,000 (€13,100) a month – after she was fired from the White House – for a campaign job requiring her to be“positive”. Ms Manigault Newman claims the job offer was aimed at silencing her.

The White House has branded Ms Manigault Newman as a disgruntled former staffer with credibility issues who is now trying to profit from a book based on false attacks.

Ms Manigault Newman has said she will not be silenced by the president, the White House or Mr Trump’s campaign, which has announced it is filing an arbitration action against her alleging she’d violated a secrecy agreement with the campaign. Ms Manigault Newman told PBS earlier this week that she has documentation to back up her claims.

“I have a significant amount, in fact, a treasure trove, of multimedia backup for everything that’s not only in Unhinged, but everything that I assert about Donald Trump,” she said.